laying the groundwork for military intervention

But where?

source: Borderland Beat, a "blog dedicated to the reporting of organized crime

on the border line between the US and Mexico"

Click to enlarge the map. This is huge business. Ephedra comes from China, cocaine from Columbia, Venezuela and Brazil. The pot is grown in Mexico. And then it all flows across the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

And all that drug money is laundered.

The Justice Department charge sheet against the bank tells us that between 2003 and 2008, Wachovia handled $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchanges, "the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history."

..There is also evidence of direct U.S. military involvement. In June, The Narco News Bulletin reported that "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations." (Money laundering and the global drug trade are fueled by the capitalist elites, Tom Burghardt, July 29, 2010)

Advice and training? Always helpful.

It is common practice for the British authorities to set up and operate drugs and money laundering cartels. Without the full cooperation of customs officials and law enforcement agencies it would obviously be extremely risky, and preclusively difficult to import the huge quantities drugs required to sustain the lucrative UK black-market. Undercover operations provide a superb cover for the highly profitable government-controlled drug trade. (UK authorities drug trafficking and money laundering, The Insider, July 30, 2003)

All over the world, Officials put the "O" in Organized Crime.

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Obama left Martha's Vineyard today. Next stop for Obama, Fort Bliss, TX, to talk about Iraq.

Facts about Fort Bliss from Global Security: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/fort-bliss.htm

• With 1.1 million acres, this post is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and can accommodate every weapon system in the Army. 
• Excellent ranges and training area, coupled with the third longest runway in the nation, make Fort Bliss a premiere facility for training, mobilization and deploying combat forces.
• The U.S. Army’s Air Defense and Artillery Center and Fort Bliss (USAADACENFB) is a U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) installation. 
• It is the only U.S. Army training installation in the continental U.S. capable of firing long-range Air Defense Artillery missiles, such as Patriot, HAWK and eventually the Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) System.
• Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) installation, is comprised of approximately 1.12 million acres of land in Texas and New Mexico. 
• The Main Cantonment Area of Fort Bliss is located adjacent to El Paso, Texas. The installation also includes McGregor Range (which is the subject of this LEIS) and Doña Ana Range–North Training Areas in New Mexico, and the South Training Areas in Texas.
• Fort Bliss is one of 16 installations under the management of TRADOC. It was the home of the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Center and Fort Bliss (USAADACENFB), the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery (ADA) School, and over 30 partner units and organizations. 
• It is the second largest Army post, and is the only troop training installation in the U.S. capable of supporting long-range overland missile firings. 
• Activities supported by Fort Bliss include troop and equipment training, as well as air defense and air-to-ground training, and ground maneuver training.
• Fort Bliss is the largest installation in TRADOC (1.1 Million Acres), and the second largest in the Army (WSMR is the largest and is adjacent to Ft. Bliss). Ft. Bliss is the largest Maneuver Area in the Army, at 550 square miles, which is three times the size of the National Training Center. It provides the largest contiguous tract of virtually unrestricted airspace in the Continental United States (1500 Square Miles).

Also near the border in Arizona, Fort Huachuca, in Cochise County.

"Major tenants are the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM)/9th Army Signal Command and the United States Army Intelligence Center."

As I said, reports are that Obama is going there, to the US / Mexico border, to talk about Iraq.

We recently wrote about nearby Pinal County. They are having problems there, losing control of parts of the county to drug traffickers.

See: prophylactic logic

In Pinal County Arizona, local law enforcement report that Mexican drug cartels have literally taken over a corridor running up to Phoenix, and law enforcement is overwhelmed. This report is from June 14, 2010.

"We are three counties deep. How is it that you see pictures like these, not American with semi and fully automatic rifles. How is that okay?" asked Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. Babeu said he no longer has control over parts of his county. "We are outgunned, we are out manned and we don't have the resources here locally to fight this," he said at a Friday news conference. Five weeks ago Deputy Louie Puroll was ambushed and shot as he tracked six drug smugglers. Sheriff Babeu said the ambush mirrored military tactics.

What a coincidence.

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As you probably know, 72 people were massacred the other day in Mexico, and an investigator on the case went missing and was found dead.

The National Terror Alert, of the U.S. Homeland Security indicates they are receiving reports from local media that a Mexico official investigating the bodies of 72 migrants found on a ranch in the northeastern Mexico was killed. The body of the offical was found Friday, August 27, 2010, near a road next to another unidentified person. Two cars exploded outside the ational TV network Televisa studio in Ciudad Victoria. The migrants came from at least four known countries: Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil and Ecuador. The bodys were tied up and blindfolded by a barn when the navy entered the ranch on Tuesday. One victim who was able to escape told officials the migrants been kidnapped by the drug cartel known as the Zetas.

One person survived.

The horrifying massacre of 72 Central and South American immigrants by the hands of Zetas shocked the world. Preliminary investigations, based on testimony by the sole survivor of this attack, report the immigrants were first given the option of paying their ransoms in cash or as cartel slaves. Having no cash and refusing to join Zeta forces, the 58 men and 14 women, were blindfolded and bound before being executed on spot.

A woman, Marisolina, escaped slavery from the Zetas. Actually, they let her go after three months, warning her not to talk about it. She washed the clothes of the butcher.

Still visibly scared, Marisolina recalls that exact moment: "Mockingly, and without any remorse, he told me he was in charge of killing the immigrants who couldn't afford to pay their ransom. He said: Fist I cut them into pieces so they fit into the drums, then I light them on fire, I let them burn until there's nothing left of the little assholes."...No longer able to contain her tears she finally, after several long minutes, continued her story: "I washed, so many times, the blood of those people. As I scrubbed at the blood, pieces of meat fell out. Everything smelled of soot, which to me, was the smell of death."

Note the organization.

Marisolina was held captive for three months by a group that called themselves Los Zetas. In their get togethers and business meetings, she was in charge of serving meals to the leaders."When they were together, I would hear them say Los Zetas was a very respectable organization. Sometimes they took me to a hotel they rented in Coatzacoalcos, it was there I learned to recognize La Compania's, as they called it, chain of command."

The soldiers, she revealed, where those in charge of guarding the immigrants day and night. "Then there were the Alfa. I heard them, many times, speaking to police, immigration officials, and train conductors. They would advise them when large numbers of immigrants were coming on the train, or when they were detained."

Trying to minimize her Salvadoran accent, she recalls the location of at least six butchers, one for each safe house. "Above the butchers were the big bosses, they were the ones who gave the orders of which immigrants to kill."

She manages to stay alive. Look what happens to her after being released.

Long walks and days and nights without eating or sleeping, preceded her denunciation of the Zetas who had held her captive. She didn't want to talk to the police, she trusted no one. She agreed to the assistance offered by the National Commission of Human Rights only after being reminded her testimony could help prevent others from suffering the same.

Clearly this woman was a victim, and terrified, and living under a death sentence from people with no qualms about killing. The National Commission of Human Rights guilts her into testifying....

Unfortunately, Marisolina's nightmare did not end there. The greatest deception came when the Attorney General's office informed them her situation had changed. After reviewing her testimony, they had reasonable suspicion she was part of the Zeta's criminal organization, thus her legal status had changed from that of the victim to the indicted.

And the the Attorney General's office accuses her.

Tough on crime then, are we?

[See: the corruption spreads out in every direction for similar games played by Interpol (INTERPOL & THE ZANDVOORT TRAP IN SWITZERLAND). Also see: above reproach, where Interpol fails to keep statistics on Russian criminals operating abroad.]

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Is the focus on Iran ultimately misplaced? Is Obama going to the US / Mexico border to talk about the Middle East, or is he going to talk about current operations in the Americas? James at the Winter Patriot Community blog explains:

All the noise...and sabre rattling at Iran is serving the double purpose of not only exhausting everybody's psychological strength but also distracting everybody away from the Caribbean. The US is right now in the process of extending it's military control down through Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to South America and, of course, Venezuela. The US Air Force now has unrestricted access to Mexican air space, for instance.

The most likely excuse for the military intervention in Nicaragua (if it eventuates) will be the “War on Drugs”. It must be remembered that the Pentagon controls the growing and distribution world wide at one stage or another of 90% of the worlds heroin. So the heroin that is coming into the United States and is the reason for the drug wars in Mexico with all it's appalling carnage, is ultimately being provided and controlled by the US military. My estimate is that it is being transported from Afghanistan to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and from there to Costa Rica where C130 Hercules are a common sight at it's two major airports. There it is likely handed on to criminal/terrorist gangs with political cover to make its bloody way north through Central America and Mexico and into the US causing social destabilisation and political corruption all the way and laying the ground work for military intervention. The US Navy recently moved its Gulf of Mexico fleet to Costa Rica.

If Mexico has 'lost control' of entire regions, is US invasion far away? Peter Chamberlin explains:

These are the fruits of the Bush/Cheney plan to destabilize Mexico in the name of fighting narcotics trafficking. The "Merida Initiative" is a three-year, $1.4 billion aid program which has been implemented in Mexico since June 30, 2008. It is a destabilization program in that it is the exact opposite strategy now being used to pacify Afghanistan and Pakistan, in that it wages war against the troops of the drug cartels and not the leadership itself. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, where we are allegedly trying to pacify the region, American Special Forces are hunting the militant leaders to kill or capture them in their beds, seeking to decapitate the serpent.
In Mexico, they are hacking away at the tail, knowing that a tail can be easily regenerated. By waging war against the cartel's peon armies, they have entered formerly safe enclaves and escalated the acceptable level of violence to unprecedented heights. In their defense, the cartels have waged war just like the Army, using many of the same weapons. The cartels have adopted the strategies and tactics used in Africa and Asia. The fight has been enlarged into a massive dogfight to determine "top dog," while hunting spies within their own ranks and in the communities under their thumbs. This accounts for a large portion of the killings. That's the problem with this approach.

From this US Army analysis (Mexico's Narco-Insurgency and U.S. Counterdrug Policy), you can easily see that our military leaders understood that this approach was destined to fail from its inception. They understood that Mexican violence would spin out of the Army's ability to quell it. Even though the military knew that the violence would one day force military intervention, they allowed the plan to go forward anyway. This can only be understood as the military abdicating its responsibility to not allow American servicemen to be used for immoral purposes, or to support actions that will endanger the homeland. Giving the Mexican Army the training and capability to bring war to Juarez and the other drug-running regions is clearly crossing both of these red lines.